Knowing the Tune: an Example

As an example of what I wrote a fortnight ago, my procedure for tomorrow's prelude improvisation was this:

It is our Parish Meeting Sunday, with our three usual services combined into one, most often sparsely attended – many people skip church and show up for the annual meeting that follows. Seeking to honor the traditions of our contemporary service, I am playing most of the service at the piano, and about half of the songs are from their repertoire.

One of them, “You have come down to the lakeshore” (number 758 in the supplement “Wonder, Love and Praise”) will be unfamiliar to the congregation from the two traditional services, so I began with this. By using it as the basis for the prelude, I hope to plant the tune in people's ears. It is beautiful, and I want them to hear that it is so. Then, when they sing it in the liturgy, they will hopefully recognize it, and be glad to sing it.

I began playing the tune, in thirds and sixths because it very naturally falls into that pattern. I sang along on the sol-fas. I played it in various keys, and began adding accompaniment – just simple chords, arpeggios. The tune is so lovely in itself that I do not want to do any more than that to it.

I played around with fragments of the tune, again in various keys, and now in various registers – the tenor, with the right hand doing figuration above it; the high treble, very quietly; all voices in the tenor register, the tune on top.

I turned to another tune from the service: “St. Andrew,” the David Hurd tune for “Jesus calls us” (The Hymnal 1982, number 549). This is the opening hymn, and will be unfamiliar to the contemporary congregation. I worked with it in similar fashion for a while, and tried combining the two tunes, with the idea of an A-B-A form. It was not working, because the tunes are too similar – though that in itself was a useful insight. I played around with various combinations of fragments from the two tunes, and some of this might show up in tomorrow's improvisation.

I turned to a third tune: “St. Dunstan's,” the American tune for “He who would valiant be” (The Hymnal 1982, number 564). This is the closing hymn, part of the traditional congregation's repertoire – though not sung for many years; the previous rector banned the hymn because of his notions about inclusive and militaristic language. Tomorrow's service ends with a big organ postlude on “St. Dunstan's” by Leo Sowerby, but it deserves mention in the prelude as well.

This was what I needed. “You have come down to the lakeshore” is delicate, gentle, beautiful. “St. Dunstan's” is bold, vigorous. Perfect!

After playing around with the tune as I did with the others, I developed a Plan.
The prelude will be an A-B-A form as I had intended, with “You have come down to the lakeshore” as the foundation of the A section, in F major. “St. Dunstan's” will be the second theme, beginning in D flat major, which quickly turns into C sharp minor, and (if it goes the way it did today) becomes rather dark. The main part of this B section will hopefully be the tune in the left hand, octaves, in the middle register, with toccata-like figuration in the right hand above it, much of it bitonal against the tune for added dissonance.

This comes to an end, and the A section returns like a spring morning (I hope). If there is time (it is, after all, the prelude, and I must aim for it to end at the stroke of 9:30 am), “St. Andrew” will be a little coda, laying the ground for the opening hymn, which is in F major – thus the choice of overall key center for the prelude.

The point of “knowing the tune” is to be able to do all of this without the tunes written out in front of me, and in keys that I would not have considered before working on this project. F major is fine (though “You have come down” is in D major in the hymnal supplement), but C sharp minor? That is why one should at least sometimes play the tunes in the more obscure keys.

I will add that it was a delight to do this work today, playing our beloved Steinway in the quiet church, the sunlight streaming through the windows. I stayed with this work longer than I should have, for I was having such a good time.